Supreme Court gives OK for 3rd-year law students to represent felony defendants

Scott Shaw/Plain Dealer fileCleveland State University law school Dean Geoffrey Mearns said allowing third-year law school student to fully represent defendants charged with felonies will help classroom teaching. Law schools "are doing much more than they did 20 to 25 years ago in practical criminal law application. This is about continuing a current trend."

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Third-year law school students will be allowed to fully represent defendants charged with felonies under a change the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously approved last week.

Supporters for the change argue that too many lawyers begin their careers ill-prepared to handle criminal defense for indigent clients, those who often are represented by the most overworked attorneys.

Others, including the state's largest law school, are largely neutral on the change, although they say that law students graduate ready to take on serious criminal matters from both the defense and prosecution sides of the courtroom.

But some don't like the idea at all. One Cleveland attorney suggested that low-income clients could be harmed by moving through the criminal-justice system represented by students who haven't even passed the bar yet.

For years, legal interns -- typically third-year law students with a special certificate granted by their school deans -- have been able to work misdemeanor cases under the watchful eye of a professional attorney.

Some law schools, like Ohio State University's, have special clinics that give their students real-life experiences handling actual cases. The clinics operate much like an arm of a public defender's or county prosecutor's office.

"Law school does a good job of presenting the substantive material. But there are few that focus on criminal defense work," said Moore, whose center had lobbied for the rule change since 2007.

"There is a lot that law schools cannot address that students can only learn from being on their feet," she said, "from client intake, interviewing the client, listening to the client, to tending to the other needs that might be driving the conduct."

Often, new attorneys who go into criminal defense work cut their teeth at public defender's offices. But each of Ohio's 88 county public defenders handles its operations and training differently, Moore said, which can lead to uneven legal representation. The same is true for county prosecutor's offices.

An April 2006 report from a Supreme Court task force concluded that Ohio's system for providing counsel for indigent defendants is "inefficient and ineffective" and needs significant improvement.

Others who wrote to the court in support of the change were the Ohio Public Defender's Office and Chief Judge James Carr of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

But Ohio State law professor Ric Simmons said the change probably won't make a big difference.

"I think the worry was that students are somehow not prepared to handle felony cases," said Simmons, who runs the OSU law school's prosecution clinic. "But I think that worry is overblown."

Simmons said the preparation for misdemeanor cases, which legal interns were already allowed to do, isn't much different from preparing for a felony case.

"I suppose you could say [misdemeanor cases] are not as important, though they are important to the people in them," Simmons said. "But the skills the students are learning by acting as legal interns are pretty much the same for felonies and misdemeanors. So I'm not sure how much this adds."

Simmons said he is unsure if Ohio State will add felony cases for its legal interns.

One of Simmons' recent students, Sarah Rahter, who graduated this year and took the bar exam last week, said she and her classmates wanted to handle felony casesand often questioned why they were not allowed to.

"I've done misdemeanors and I'm comfortable doing misdemeanors, but it is clear I will need to work with someone on my first felonies because I didn't get that" in law school, said Rahter, who hopes to begin her career as a criminal prosecutor.

This rule change "is going to be huge. And we are so complaining about it, we're so jealous," Rahter said of herself and classmates, "because we wanted to do something like this."

Cleveland State University law school dean Geoffrey Mearns said that while law schools are doing a good job preparing students for criminal litigation, the new rule will be a tremendous asset for classroom teaching.

"Some people will say we don't do that enough," Mearns said. "But the truth is law schools are doing much more than they did 20 to 25 years ago in practical criminal law application. This is about continuing a current trend."

Cleveland State does not have a criminal-law clinic, but Mearns hopes his students will be able to take advantage of the new rule and secure internships at county prosecutor's and public defender's offices.

But Cleveland attorney Vincent Gonzalez wrote to the court on Oct. 16, 2008, strongly objecting to expanding the legal interns' duties to felony cases.

"I can visualize low-income and/or indigent defendants being relegated to speaking to and being represented by inexperienced legal interns with life-long consequences," Gonzalez wrote, adding that this provision will not help poor clients in Cuyahoga County.

Under the revised rules, which took effect Saturday, interns can serve as lead counsel on fourth- and fifth-degree felony cases for both adult and juvenile clients as long as they are supervised by a fully licensed attorney and always identify themselves as a "legal intern."

The interns can serve as co-counsel for first-, second-, and third-degree felonies alongside a fully licensed attorney.

The interns are not paid by their clients, though the law school clinic or government office they are working for could receive attorney fees for the students' work and could choose to compensate the students.

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